The Waltz Of Hearts E-Book

Barbara Cartland

• Herausgeber: Barbara Cartland Ebooks Ltd
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: The Eternal Collection
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 233

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Internationally celebrated musician, Paul Ferraris plays the violin like an angel, but since his beloved wife passed away he and beautiful young daughter Gisela have been almost destitute. Now desperate, they arrive in Vienna, where Paul is much admired and sure of finding work in one of the great theatres. In the pitch black of the Vienna Woods at night, Gisela's rescued from a rabble of rowdy students by a mysterious stranger. And even in the total darkness, somehow, she knows she's safe with him – and somehow she falls into his arms in a rapturous, unseeing kiss. With her father busily rehearsing for a major concert and love blossoming in her heart, life for Gisela is heavenly. But then in the very woods where they first kissed, her handsome stranger breaks the spell with the revelation that he's a Prince, heir to the Hungarian throne, and that he is leaving her forever to spare her the humiliation of a Royal family who will never accept the daughter of a mere musician. Gisela's fairy tale turns sourer still as her father faces death in a duel – to lose her beloved Papa as well as the love of her life is simply too much to bear.

Leseprobe

Author’s Note

When I visited Vienna the very first time, I loved the Heurigers Wine Gardens, where the music was just as I have described it in this novel as well as the inspiring St. Stephens Cathedral and the charming good manners of the Austrians.

Later I wrote The Private Life of Elizabeth Empress of Austria, which for many years was acknowledged by the Elizabeth Club to be the best biography of her.

A further honour came in 1969 when I was given a Civic Reception for my work for the Health Movement by the Mayor of Vienna who, during the War, had served in the Resistance with President Tito and Dr. Paul Urban.

There was a delicious and impressive dinner in the historic City Hall and, when all the speeches were over, a band appeared and we all danced to The Blue Danube.

The Esterházy Palace still stands in the small village of Fertöd. It was badly damaged in the last War. The summerhouses and ornamental Temples in the French Rococo Park – once part of the background of the Udvar – the old Court world, were largely destroyed.

But the restoration on the magnificent Palace itself is now complete.

It is one of the great sights of Hungary and so attracts more than one hundred thousand tourists each year.

Chapter One ~ 1873

“I am tired, Gisela.”

Then you must go to bed, Papa.”

“That is what I intend to do.”

“I am sure that you will sleep well here in the woods.”

The large fat proprietress of the inn, coming into the room at that moment with a pot of steaming hot coffee in her hand, heard what Gisela had said.

“You will not be awakened, Herr Ferraris. I have given you a room at the back and it is impossible to hear from there what is going on at the front however noisy my young guests might be.”

“You have always been kindness itself, Frau Bubna,” Paul Ferraris replied.

The proprietress, putting the coffee down on the table, smiled at him affectionately.

“I shall never forget when I first saw you, a thin snippet of a lad you were, a new student at the University and rather afraid of what would happen to you. But then when I heard you playing – !”

She threw up her hands,

“At that moment I knew unmistakably that you were a genius!”

“You were the only one who recognised it in those days.”

“I am never mistaken,” Frau Bubna said, shaking her finger at him. “Never – never! And with you there was no chance of my making a mistake.”

Gisela clasped her hands together.

She knew that it made her father so happy to hear such things said to him in his beloved Austria where he had studied at the University of Vienna.

On the way he had talked of nothing but the people who had been kind to him as a young man and how he hoped that they were all still alive.

They had arrived in Vienna earlier that afternoon, after a long and tiring train journey that seemed as if it would never end.

They had taken a carriage out of the City and up into the Vienna Woods to the inn where Paul Ferraris had claimed that he would be welcome even after twenty-five years.

Gisela had been half-afraid that the place would be closed or would have changed hands and she knew how much that would disappoint her father.

However, after a moment’s hesitation at the sight of him, when he said his name, Frau Bubna had flung her arms round him and exclaimed,

“It’s my scraggy little Paul, the Englishman who was so afraid of Vienna, but who could play the violin like an angel. Welcome back! Welcome!”

After that there had been reminiscences, toasts and news of people who were only names to Gisela.

She was very content to listen and know that her father seemed to be in better health and happier than she had seen him since her mother had so sadly died.

For more than two years they had wandered from place to place settling nowhere and only when it seemed that their money was going to run out because he had earned so little did her father say,

“We will go to Vienna then. It is where I have always meant to return, but your mother always preferred to go to France.”

It was Gisela’s mother who had looked after everything these past years. Her husband might make the music of angels, but he had no idea that those who relied on him had to eat.

He would play just for his wife and his daughter, an audience of two, as contentedly and brilliantly as if he was playing in a packed theatre.

Paul Ferraris had been acclaimed in Paris and, with his wife organising his engagements, he had made a good deal of money until the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War and, when the Germans had marched in, those who could afford it had left as quickly as they possibly could.

Quite soon afterwards his wife had died very tragically after a sudden illness and Paul Ferraris and Gisela spent a short time in the South of France.

But there was very little money to be made there and, after they had moved through Italy to Greece, finally Paul Ferraris had yearned for Austria and especially for Vienna.

Gisela, attempting to take her mother’s place, asked him whom they should approach to arrange a Concert for him or an engagement in one of the best theatres.

“They will all know my name, there is no doubt about that,” he said. “All we have to do is to contact my friends.”

When Gisela pressed him for their names, he was rather elusive.

It worried her, but she was still sure that his name would have preceded him and Johann Strauss, whose music was to be heard everywhere, would at least welcome him as a fellow artist

In the meantime Frau Bubna remembered him and Gisela was determined to talk to her alone when the opportunity arose.

“You are doing well here,” her father was saying. “Surely the place is a little larger than I remember?”

“Larger, Mein Herr. It is double the size,” Frau Bubna exclaimed. “We are fashionable. Everybody sooner or later comes to drink my wines and eat my Schnitzels.”

“If they are as good as those we have had tonight,” Paul Ferraris said, “then I am not surprised.”

“Tomorrow I will cook you my Palatschinken.”

Paul Ferraris smiled with delight.

“No one could cook them like you, Mein Frau, and I have already told my daughter that nothing in the world could be more delicious.”

Gisela knew that Palatschinken consisted of thin dessert pancakes rolled in honey, fruits and other succulent titbits.

Not once but a dozen times on the long journey her father had described to her what they were like and she had to admit that the Schnitzels had lived up to her expectations and so had the Apfelstrudel.

“I will soon grow fat if we stay here for too long,” Gisela commented.

“You think you would grow fat like me?” Frau Bubna asked. “That is unlikely. I never could fatten your father although I never knew a student who ate so much and was always so hungry.”

Her father was still very thin, Gisela thought, and it made him look most elegant in his evening clothes when he stood in the centre of the stage and lifted his precious Stradivarius violin and tucked it under his chin.

She had often thought that perhaps the ladies in the audience were as thrilled by him as they were by his music and certainly their eyes were all on his handsome face with his swept-back hair, which was just beginning to turn grey at the temples.

“I am jealous of the attention you receive from such lovely ladies,” her mother had said once.

“There is no need, my darling,” her father had replied. “The only lovely lady in my life is you.”

What was more, unlike most musicians, her father’s whole happiness was concentrated in his home.

He rarely went out to supper after a performance, which those who wanted to lionise him could not understand.

Instead he would drive back to wherever they were staying to have supper alone with his wife and later, when she grew older, with his daughter, Gisela.

When her mother had died, Gisela knew that her father would be very lost, bewildered and unhappy.

To see someone locked in the depths of despair was frightening, but she loved her father so much that she knew that for his sake, as well as for her mother’s, she had to lift him out of his depression. And the only thing that could do it was music.

‘Everything will be so much better now that he has come to Vienna,’ she thought as she watched him talking animatedly with Frau Bubna.

At the same time she realised by the long lines under his eyes and the way he sometimes hesitated over a word or two that he was still very tired.

As he finished his coffee with the thick cream floating on top of it, she urged him,

“Go on up to bed, Papa, and tomorrow as there will be no horrible trains to catch and no pressing engagements to keep, and you must sleep as late as you can.”

“That is sensible,” Frau Bubna agreed, “and you too, Fraulein, must have your beauty sleep. Guten nacht and may God look over you.”

She went from the room as she spoke and Gisela smiled at her father.

“She is wonderful!” she exclaimed. “I can understand why you wanted to see her again.”

“She must be well over sixty years of age by now,” he answered, “and yet she talks with the enthusiasm of a young girl and bounces round like a balloon!”

They both laughed.

“Tomorrow, when we are both properly awake,” he said, “I will show you Vienna. I feel as if I have come home.”

Gisela knew that in fact it was his adopted home, but she did not say so, as it always annoyed her father to be reminded that he was half-English.

He had been unhappy living in England with his father, who she gathered was a strict martinet and whose second wife resented Paul.

His grandparents on his mother’s side had been Austrian and Paul had gone out to stay with them in the holidays. After they learnt how unhappy he was at home, they had kept him with them in Vienna.

They sent him to the University and when they found that he had a great talent for music, especially for the violin, he had taken their name and made it his own.

“Then how can you possibly expect anyone to take you seriously as a musician if you are English?” his grandmother had said scornfully. “As Paul Ferraris, they will listen to you with respect and that is the first step in the battle for recognition.”

Because he was an intelligent young man, Paul had known that she was speaking good sense and anyway he hated England and had no wish to be reminded of his unhappiness after his mother’s death.

He soon thought of himself as belonging completely to her family, yet sometimes Gisela detected in her father English characteristics which he had no idea he possessed.

It was her mother who had insisted that, wherever they went, Gisela should work hard at her English lessons as well as those in other languages.

“You are three-quarters English, my dearest girl,” she said, “and it would be so stupid to pretend otherwise. I have always believed that ultimately we all have our deepest roots in the countries we belong to and perhaps one day you will go to England and find it is the place which appeals to you more than anywhere else.”

“I think that is unlikely, Mama,” Gisela replied, “but, if you love England, I shall love it too. But Papa has always made Austria sound so romantic and so exciting.”

“Your father conveniently forgets that he also has Hungarian blood in him, as his great-grandmother was Hungarian. So quite frankly, my dearest, he is a mongrel, although he is not prepared to admit it!”

They laughed at this, but to Gisela it was so exciting that she could feel an affinity with the histories of England, Austria, Hungary and, because they had lived there, France.

It also was easy for her to speak the languages of all four countries.

Being able to understand Frau Bubna, without having to mentally translate everything she said into another language, made her appreciate the hours that she had spent with many different Governesses when she had longed to be out playing or riding in the sunshine.

‘Tomorrow I shall listen to Austrian German being spoken in the streets, in the shops, in the restaurants and, of course, in the theatre,’ she thought, ‘and I shall also hear singing.’

She realised that that was what she had been missing since they had come to the Vienna Woods.

Her father had told her often of how the students sang and the Officers from the Barracks sang and everybody would join in, their voices echoing and re-echoing amongst the trees.

Almost as if he knew what she was thinking, her father said suddenly,

“If I go to bed, Gisela, you must do the same. Frau Bubna is right. You need your beauty sleep.”

“It is still very early, Papa.”

“It is quiet tonight,” her father replied, “unusually quiet. But Frau Bubna will have no time to look after you if many people arrive for supper.”

The way he said it made Gisela look at him in surprise.

“Do you mean they might be rowdy?” she asked.

Her father hesitated.

“Not exactly,” he said. “For all I know it would be just good fun. But you are very lovely and are growing more like your mother every day. I am aware that at eighteen you should be chaperoned and can no longer run about freely like a child.”

Gisela was surprised.

“This is something new, Papa. You have never talked to me like this before.”

“We have been living very quietly this past year,” her father replied. “As you well know, we have not been to the Cities that are gay and where beautiful women attract men’s eyes like magnets.”

“Don’t worry about me, Papa,” Gisela said. “I can look after myself. Anyway we will talk about all this tomorrow but not tonight.”

She saw that his eyes were drooping with fatigue and she knew that like all great artists he would one moment be pulsating with energy and vitality and the next, almost as if the life-force had gone out of him, he would be limp to the point where she felt that she must support him physically.

As if he realised that she was talking sense, Paul Ferraris rose to his feet, yawned and walked towards the door.

“Goodnight, my dearest,” he said. “You are as sensible as your mother always was. As you say, tomorrow we will talk, but not tonight.”

He went from the room, which was a small private one at the back of the house where Frau Bubna had served their meal.

There was a restaurant at the front of the inn and a whole profusion of tables outside set in the shade of the trees where Gisela had secretly looked forward to eating and watching the other diners.

But Frau Bubna insisted that they have their meal early so that she could wait on them herself and, because both Paul Ferraris and Gisela felt extremely hungry, they were only too willing to agree.

Gisela picked up the soft wrap that matched her gown and which she had brought down with her in case she went out into the woods after dinner.

Instead of putting it around her shoulders, she draped it over one arm. Then she looked out of the window and thought that, whatever her father might say, it was far too early to go to bed.

She longed to have a closer look at the Vienna Woods, of which she had heard so much and read even more.

She was also certain that they would be the most romantic woods in the whole world and what she had seen as they drove through them to the inn had confirmed this impression.

The silver birches, the willows, the poplars and the pussy-willows grew up and down the slopes. There were still a few lilacs left over from early spring and a profusion of blossoms on trees and shrubs that Gisela could not put names to.

Almost as if she moved without thinking, she went out of the small room and, instead of climbing the twisting wooden stairs up to the next floor above, she walked through an open door that led into what might be termed the garden at the back of the house.

It was really only a plot, thick with flowers that scented the air, then it became part of the woods and the trees were so near that they seemed almost to be encroaching on the inn.

Because it was all so lovely and the night was hot yet dark, Gisela walked on and now as she moved beneath the heavy foliage above her and with the tree trunks at her side, she could see below her the lights from the City of Vienna as they came on one by one.

There was not enough light to distinguish anything clearly except for the tall spire of the Cathedral and the River Danube, silver even in the dusk that was the prelude to darkness.

The lights of the City were just like fallen stars and Gisela knew that, when she could see through the foliage overhead, the stars in the sky would be coming out one by one to twinkle like diamonds against an iridescent background of the softest velvet.

It was exciting and she felt as if she floated rather than walked over the ground.

Her feet were almost dancing in time to some celestial music that played in the leaves and in the flowers that she could smell even though she could not see them.

Then the trees on her left cleared a little and so she could see the whole panorama of the Danube basin lying below her.

She knew that somewhere in the half-darkness there would be Gansehaufel Island and Korneuburg with its Castle, both of which she would be able to see tomorrow.

Her father had promised to take her to look at the baroque Schönbrunn Palace, which was flanked by the domed Karlskirche.

There was so much to see and so much to hear that it seemed almost a crime to think of sleep.

As more and more lights came on until it seemed as if the whole City was ablaze with them, she felt that she must be missing something vital and exciting that was waiting here for her.

Perhaps, she now told herself, that was what she expected of Vienna that it would give her something she had always missed although she was not quite certain what it was.

She knew only that, because her father had talked about Vienna so often, it had an almost mystic meaning for her, but it was something that she could not put into any words and felt that instead it should be expressed in music.

It was then that she became aware that she was hearing music, not the sort that her father played, but voices singing – men’s voices.

She recognised the tune as, ever since they had crossed the frontier into Austria, they had heard it sung, whistled and hummed on the train at every Station that they had stopped at and in every inn where they had stopped.

It was a very popular waltz and Gisela had soon discovered that the words changed and altered according to the needs of the singer.

Now, as the voices came nearer and still nearer, she could hear them singing,

“I’m seeking love. Where is she hiding?

I’m seeking love. Where can she be?

Dancing, riding, singing or drinking.

She will not escape me.”

She had the feeling, although she was not quite sure, that these were the students’ words they had made up to the music and, as they repeated the line, ‘She will not escape me,’ they followed it with shouts that seemed quite literally to shake the leaves of the trees above her.

The voices were coming along the path that she was standing on and she was suddenly aware of just how precarious her position was.

She had a feeling that the students might think it amusing to find a pretty girl alone in the woods.

She was sure that they would not hurt her, but they might easily take it into their heads to kiss her and perhaps to force her to go along with them wherever they were going.

Suddenly panicking at the idea, Gisela wondered if she should run wildly back to the inn.

But, when she looked in the direction that they were coming from, it was very dark under the trees and she was afraid that if she hurried she might fall.

What was more her white gown would be easily seen and might attract their attention.

She looked behind her and saw what she had not noticed before, a shelter or arbour that had been erected obviously for courting couples.

It contained a fine wooden seat and there were shrubs and a vine overhead that had been trained to constitute some protection perhaps from the elements or perhaps from prying eyes.

Swiftly, as the men’s voices were growing louder every moment, Gisela slipped into the arbour and, moving behind the seat, squeezed herself into the far corner.

Now, as she listened to them, she thought that they did sound very jovial as if they had already been imbibing the cheap beer that was so delicious or perhaps the local wine.

Her father had told her very often that even the most impoverished student could afford a glass or two of Grinzing wine after a hard day in the University.

Because she was frightened, Gisela felt herself trembling as the voices came nearer and now the words seemed to have an almost personal message for her.

“Dancing, riding, singing or drinking,

She will not escape me.”

‘Supposing’ she thought, ‘just supposing they notice me?’

She then began to wish frantically that she had obeyed her father’s instructions and gone to bed.

Of course she should not be alone in the woods at this time of the night, but it had all seemed so lovely and just like a fantasy out of her imagination.

But this was reality and young men were the same the world over.

Just as she was aware that the marching feet of the singers had reached the arbour and this was the dangerous moment when they might look in and see her gown, a splash of white against the shadows, a man appeared in the entrance.

Gisela’s heart gave a leap of fear. Then she realised that he was not facing inwards but was standing with his back to her.

She could not see him clearly, but he was so tall that his head was level with the top of the arbour and, as he remained there, she realised that since he was standing in that particular position, it would be impossible for the passing singers to look inside and see her.

After her first moment of fear at his sudden appearance, she was then very grateful for him and now the men’s voices seemed almost deafening as they shouted, ‘She will not escape me,’ and followed it with cheers and shouts of laughter.

The man in the entrance of the arbour stood quite still as they passed by him and she heard one of the singers say,

“Come and join us. The night is young and the wine at the Bubna Inn is good.”

“I will do so later,” the man replied.

The last of the singers moved away and the roar of their voices gradually receded until it was little more than a murmur in the distance.

Gisela realised that she had been holding her breath and now she could breathe again but she dared not move.

The man was still there and she wondered if he would follow the singers to the inn as he had been asked to do.

Then, as she realised that she was trembling, although she was not as frightened as she had been at first, the man asked,

“You are all right?”

She had not realised that he knew that she was there and she started before she answered in a very small voice,

“Thank you for – standing as you – did. I was afraid that they – might see me.”

“I thought that was why you were hiding,” he said. “It was a sensible thing to do, but it was not very sensible of you to come into the woods alone at night.”

“I – know,” Gisela replied, “but it was so lovely and it – seemed almost – wrong to go to bed so early.”

She thought the man smiled, but she could not see his face for the night seemed to have grown much darker in the last few minutes, so that his body was a blur against a very little light in the background.

“Who are you?” the man asked. “And why are you here?”

“I am staying with my father at the inn. We only arrived today.”

“I should imagine that this is your first visit to Vienna.”

“Why should you say that?”

“No one who knows the City or the Viennese would come here alone.”

Gisela gave a little sigh.

“It was indeed very – foolish of me.”

“Very! And something you must not do again.”

There was a distinctly concerned note in his voice, which surprised her and she looked at him enquiringly.

He must have sensed her curiosity and he suggested,

“Come and sit down. I think it would be wise to allow those riotous young men to settle themselves before I take you back.”

There was a pause and then Gisela said,

“You are – very kind.”

She was not quite certain what she should do. She had the feeling that she should not be talking to a stranger, but the alternative was to walk away alone and she was too frightened to do that.

Because it seemed stupid not to do what he had asked, she sat down on the seat and he sat beside her.

She realised that he was adult from the depth of his voice, but he also seemed lithe and athletic from the way he moved.

It was impossible to be sure of anything else and after a moment Gisela said nervously,

“I must go – back as soon as – you think it is safe.”

“You will be safe with me.”

She glanced at him quickly. Then, because she could see nothing in the darkness of the arbour, she looked out to where, even sitting down, she could see some of the lights in the City below.

“Suppose we introduce ourselves?” the man beside her asked. “What is your name?”

“Gisela.”

“A very pretty name and I suspect you look like it.”

Gisela could not help smiling.

“As you cannot see me,” she said, “even if I was very ugly ‒ there would be no need for me to admit it.”

“I am quite certain that you are beautiful.”

Gisela laughed.

“How can you possibly be certain of that?”

“Because your voice is very musical and your figure seems perfect.”

She blushed and was glad that it was too dark for him to see her.

“That is entirely – supposition,” she said, “and something you – cannot prove.”

“On the contrary,” he replied. “I saw you standing against the sky when I came through the trees and so I thought that you must be one of the nymphs who we all know live in these woods.”

“I would love to see them,” Gisela exclaimed involuntarily.

The man beside her gave a little laugh.

“I have been fortunate enough to do so.”